


Family is Triumph

by amtrak12



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-24
Updated: 2014-06-24
Packaged: 2018-02-06 02:22:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1840813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amtrak12/pseuds/amtrak12
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Helena watches Fringe. Not as light-hearted as the premise suggests. Ignores aired episodes after Instinct. Major Fringe spoilers for the entire series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Family is Triumph

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to make Helena feel things because of Fringe and then it turned into an actual journey. Apparently I'm not finished with correcting a post-Instinct world.

"That's not how vision works." Helena frowns at the TV. Adelaide looks over her shoulder.

"It doesn't?"

"No, images aren't stored within the eye. They're processed in the brain."

"Maybe they're pulling the image from the brain. They have the whole head," Nate says.

Helena holds back a sigh. "And if they could pull information from a deceased brain, why should they bother with a foggy image that may not lead them anywhere? Why not pull the entire memory of the victim's final moments?"

She notices Nate's exasperation too late. "It's just a TV show."

"Right." Fiction. A work of fiction may bend the rules however it wishes in the name of entertainment, though that's hardly an excuse. The Island of Dr. Moreau is not how biology and chemistry works - one could never turn an animal into a man by means of vivisection - and yet it was still wondrous enough to capture imaginations. This recovering the final image of one's life nonsense was dismissed as uncredible back in her time. Hardly the fringe science this show boasts about.

She pushes down her displeasure and gives Nate a smile. "Forensics department. I'm rather strict with my science."

"Remind me to never watch C.S.I. with you," Nate says.

_And remind me never to mention C.S.I. is where I learned my forensics basics._

Watching Fringe stays a regular evening activity and thankfully, the following episodes are not so out of touch with their science. In fact, some of it references work Helena's unfamiliar with. It reaches the point where Helena can't separate the fiction from the real science. There has to be some scientific grounding for this show, but where is the line? How much is a fabrication?

It becomes a challenge to identify and recognize the science, a new goal to strive for. She begins making notes of theories and experiments. Privately, of course, and she never says a word while the show is on, unless Adelaide has asked a question. Her journals take on more than idle musings and attempts to remove all thoughts that did not belong to Emily Lake. They grow to contain sketches, calculations, lists of subjects to research and learn more about - neuroscience, she's very interested in reading up on the latest advances in understanding the human brain. Her journals start to echo the ones from a century before and no longer reflect Emily Lake at all.

Still she's curious. And the show only gives her more and more wonders to consider. Unlocking new abilities in humans might be possible; a chemical administered during childhood when the brain was still developing makes sense. Of course, cortexiphan is fictional, but the idea is interesting. There must be some other forces at work in this world for people to create artifacts, both intentional and not, so why not a person with the ability to turn lights off with her mind? Why not, indeed.

She should've seen that this was the beginning of the end, that the walls containing H.G. Wells were thinning and thinning until the torrents would no longer be held back, until one small puncture would rupture the entire thing and send her washing away with quick-moving currents.

She washes away to a nearby town and rents an apartment. She's afraid to follow the currents any further.

But the ideas for experiments don't disappear. Neither does Fringe.

It isn't difficult to find the rest of the series - she is adapting rather marvelously to this modern age. (Oh and also a Netflix account was included as part of the new life the Regents set up for her when she first left. She's never used it much before, but she utilizes it now.)

She soon realizes they hadn't been watching the series in order, or at least she hadn't. She's only seen a scattering of season one episodes, though she could have sworn she's seen more. How many episodes were produced a year? Wasn't it expensive to film that much?

She starts over from the beginning, unwilling to miss any inaccurate information or wonderful new idea.

She discovers the characters instead.

Oh, not at first, of course. The science has her attention at first and the most she feels towards the people involved is some mild annoyance at Peter and his dismissive attitude. But somewhere around episode eight or ten, she realizes she has this nagging feeling tugging at her whenever Agent Dunham is on screen. Near the end of the season, she finally realizes why.

She reminds her of Myka.

It registers like a flash, something quick and almost painful. Truthfully, Olivia Dunham is nothing like Myka, and after the initial realization, all the differences between the two come rushing through her, like her mind is trying to reassure her. This is not Myka. This woman has nothing to do with Myka.

Still. But still.

Her heart beats a tad faster in the following episodes. It isn't the discovery of parallel universes (though she does find herself excited to see that idea explored; she hopes they'll dive deeply into it). No, it's just Olivia. Her voice, her reactions, her facial expressions. Helena finds herself paying more and more attention to this character, more curious to know who she is as a person. And as a byproduct, she finds herself more engaged with the others, with the mad scientist Walter Bishop, with the son Peter, with FBI Captain Broyles and Massive Dynamics CEO Nina Sharpe. She finds herself curious why Nina seems to know more than she ever tells, wonders why she didn't identify more with Walter from the start. They are frighteningly similar, though her far-reaching experiments were never what drove her mad.

Season 2 Episode 16 "Peter"

The experiments may not have been what drove Walter mad, either.

She sits there numbed and barely breathing. She knows what's coming, should have known far, far earlier, but somehow the clues and hints never solidified into a fact. Perhaps her mind had been trying to protect her or perhaps she stubbornly wanted to reject the notion.

She can't reject it now. The scene is playing out right in front of her. There's no denying it any longer.

Peter's dying. He is dead. Such a small boy, a baby, only the age of Christina, exactly the same age. Such a small, small boy.

She can't see the screen through her tears, but she doesn't need to see to know. She's already lived this scene, has lived this scene for over a hundred years.

She sits on the floor in front of the couch where she can be smaller. She continues to cry as the episode plays out. Walter finds the cure too late, but he saves the boy from the other side. He saves this other Peter. She sees that he regrets the portal closing before he can return this Peter. She knows he hates separating the boy from his parents, but she also understands why he did it, why he took that risk. How could he not save that other Peter? That was still his child, still his son. 

Helena would have done the same. She would have done the exact same thing and maybe not felt guilt or remorse when the portal closed with Christina still on her side. But then she's more selfish than these people on the screen. She'd let people die as she tried to save Christina. She would've easily fought some other version of herself as well if it meant keeping her daughter.

She doesn't continue with the series right away. She paces her small apartment instead, goes to work when she's meant to, stares with trepidation at the journals and beginnings of a work bench that sit in her bedroom. She can't quite move on, so she stays still.

She rewatches "Peter". Watches it nearly on repeat. Every evening she plays it again, sometimes starting over from the beginning, sometimes only watching that one scene. Her eyes still tear up, her chest still hosts the deep, unending cavern of pain, and when the episode is finished, she plays it again.

How many times can she watch it? How many times did she watch her daughter die?

After a few weeks, episode 17 finally plays. She'll never remember later if she chose to hit play or if she had been too slow reaching for the remote and Netflix forced it to play, but it doesn't matter. The spell of grief has passed. She begins to breathe again.

She doesn't remember the next few episodes very well. She hardly notices when a new season starts. She thinks she's supposed to be angry with the two Olivias being swapped, that she should be more worried and anxious over Olivia - the main Olivia - being brainwashed and frantically trying to escape the parallel world, but her mind is preoccupied. Now that she knows the truth about Peter, she can't stop viewing him as an impossibility, an anomaly or a miracle, someone who shouldn't be there. All their lives should be so different. Peter was dying (had died) and yet somehow managed to live.

She wonders who Christina would've grown to be. Back before, she always tried so hard never to imagine Christina grown, forced herself to believe she would see it someday with her own eyes because her daughter wasn't really dead.

But she was. Helena failed. Christina is gone forever and she's left with such few memories of her baby girl.

Would Christina have stayed brilliant? Would she have developed Helena's sharp wit and impatience or would she have kept the quiet kindness she always seemed to impossibly possess? Would she have kept her love for flowers and bees and frogs and become a naturalist or a biologist? Would life and experience have presented her with another calling?

What consequences might have haunted her? If Helena had saved her, if she had prevented her death, would the incident still have left its mark on her? Would she have been changed? Would Helena have been changed? Would she have inadvertently damaged her daughter with paranoia or something much, much worse? Would Christina remember dying even without truly remembering or experiencing it? Or would she remember everything and be constantly haunted by men invading the house and stopping her breath in an attempt to stop her screams?

So many possible consequences. So many mysteries without answers. And they ultimately all boil down to a meaningless, empty pile of nothing.

One can't turn back time and change the past.

Peter wavers and then disappears. The opening credits are now colored a golden amber. Helena is more attentive of these episodes. They altered the timeline and erased Peter's existence. He now died as a child on both sides of the breach. She was right: everyone's lives were far different.

Even knowing the past can't be changed, she can't help but take note of this exploration of timelines. She can't stop herself from parsing out the differences, the similarities, the ones explicitly discussed, the ones implicitly shown. Her mind automatically pulls up explanations, the logic behind the differences. Even when she finds fallacies or inconsistencies in the show's plot, she still tries to make sense of the altered timeline.

As if there is a right and wrong way to alter a timeline. As if timelines can be altered.

Still her mind whirls with all the possibilities. She opens her journals again and jots them down with notes in the margins.

Not a single one mentions Christina. Each one is either a note on Fringe or a general observation.

She smiles when she realizes this. _Do you see Christina? I'm not hurting anyone this time._

Olivia fights to get her memories back in the show. Insists on it even as the people she's closest to question if it's best.

Myka would've done that. Myka always insists on the truth.

This knowledge makes Helena smile too.

Late in the season the show takes a rest from the plot to give a glimpse into another world. Helena's mind is still running with all the ways timelines can branch off from each other, and she doesn't notice right away. She misses Charles suddenly. He could have written the stories while she toyed with the physics and theories. It had been a good system, apart from everyone calling /him/ the genius.

But oh what's this? What is this future the show is exploring now? This isn't the world of Olivia and Peter and Walter, at least not the way they've been showing it.

Though, the girl.... She knows that girl, knows exactly what will be revealed this time around. It's so obvious.

_"Hi, Dad."_

They have a daughter. Olivia and Peter have a daughter. And yes, clearly Etta has had to grow up without her parents, clearly there's been a terrible invasion and Olivia and Peter have had to bronze themselves (ambered, they call it amber in this show; it does seem kinder than bronzing with no awareness of being immobile). But that's hardly important. What's important is _they have a daughter._ Little Etta who's alive and grown and oh, so brilliant and capable. She looks exactly like them. She carries herself exactly like her mother, is a defender of the people just like her mother.

She's beautiful. She's so, so beautiful.

The episode ends too quickly. It tells her what she figured out back in the first ten minutes and then it's just over. Helena impatiently plays through the next episodes, hoping they'll show Etta again, that there was a point to giving her a glimpse of this future so dark and terrible around this bright and shining face.

She breathes a sigh of relief when season five starts. There's that same future again, and yes, it's awful, what they call apocalyptic, _but there's Etta._ Reunited with her father and soon (not soon enough) reunited with her mother. They have their daughter. The world has fallen apart around them, but they have their daughter.

Helena can sit through the infuriating Observers when Etta exists.

She can until the Observers are too fast.

_No._

Etta is thrown.

"No."

It becomes a whispered prayer. "No, no, no, no, no," as Etta crawls, wounded, for her gun, as the Observer, ruthless and uncaring, picks her up and slams her against the pillar, as Etta pulls up the dandelion memory to hold onto.

"No."

The Observer pulls his gun. The camera pans away to the family upstairs, to Olivia Dunham turning around at the shot.

_"Etta."_

"NO!!!"

Helena doesn't wait to see Olivia and Peter rush downstairs to find their dying daughter, doesn't watch as the light fades from Etta's eyes. She bolts up from the couch and marches through the room, anger roiling through her, radiating off of her. There could be sparks flying from her, she's so angry. She shouts and shouts and doesn't hear a word from the TV.

"No!" She throws a glass from the counter because it's there and she needs something to break. After the shatter, she hears footsteps overhead. She registers voices somewhere else and immediately falls silent.

This is an apartment. There are other residents in this building. She's not alone here. Someone may decide to check on her or call the police on her. Quietly she backs away and retreats into her bedroom.

There's a whole world out there still. It's just as disorienting to remember as when Myka yanked her away from Christina (vision, vision of Christina; Etta is just a work of fiction). It feels almost as terrible.

She doesn't cry, though. She doesn't return to watch the next episode either. She's furious. Wants to burn the Observers to the ground and maybe break her television for good measure. It's frustrating feeling like this. She can't remember an anger this futile before.

When weeks pass and she still finds her hands clenching at random times, still feels her jaw tighten when she spies a test tube at work or the journals on her desk at home, she turns Netflix back on and continues with the final (final?!) season.

She watches in bitterness. Refuses to feel the pain and the grief. Refuses to pick a side or hold an opinion on Peter implanting the probe. There's some kind of determination being grown in the heart of her anger. A strong, hopeless yet stubborn, determination. They will not take another child from her. They won't take another child.

The anger breaks and fades when the solution comes in sight. Reset the timelines. Prevent the Observers from ever existing. So simple and completely, entirely unrealistic. The past can't be changed. This solution should anger her all over again, but it's a work of fiction, a TV show. They can have their simple fix.

Anyway, she feels too empty to be angry anymore.

_"Peter, look! What did I say? That is cool!"_

It's the grand finale, the last hurrah. Helena is content in her seat as the battle and spectacle play out in front of her. It's all suitably dramatic and everything will end as it should. Olivia kills Windmark. The gear is set up. There's shooting all around and yet not a single fringe member is hit.

Until September is hit by a bullet, until he dies on the pavement. And then Walter has to be the one to travel through the portal after all. The moment gives her pause and makes her sit up a little straighter. If she'd still been puzzling through the plot, she would have seen that Walter has always been the person meant to take the observer boy through the portal; it was simple narrative logic.

But she hasn't been considering the plot as it existed. She's simply been watching and waiting until it is over and she's able to see Etta safe and sound with her parents again.

Walter and Peter exchange looks from afar. Peter soundlessly words I love you, Dad. Walter takes the observer boy's hand and walks into the portal. Helena isn't prepared for this swell of emotion in her chest nor the tears slipping down her cheeks. The tears grow into a sob when the scene returns to the present day, to that fateful park where everything went wrong. Only this time, this time Etta makes it into her father's arms. The darling baby is whole and happy and all of them are unaware of the tragedy that was just avoided.

The show had all but promised this ending, and yet still Helena cries. Part of it is relief. For once, the promise held true. But the rest of what she feels, the other reasons for her tears, she can't identify. She just knows it's related to Walter and the portal and his sacrifice to save his son's family.

She rewinds to play the battle again. She missed something. She's reacting to something she doesn't remember.

It ends and she restarts the whole episode.

She still can't pin it down. Can't identify why her heart stops and the tears well up as Walter realizes what he has to do and steps forward. Can't understand why she shakes and feels simultaneously broken and glued together. It isn't happiness. It isn't grief and pain. This is something in between. Some indefinable emotion that is neither heartbreak nor fulfillment. She let's Netflix shut off the episode this time and holds herself on the couch while the sobs break out.

Sadness, yearning. That's what this is. But yearning for what, she still doesn't know. Maybe for nothing.

It's late. The evening is gone, and it's nearing midnight. Helena doesn't want to sleep so she locates her phone.

It only rings twice before Myka picks up. "Hello?"

"Hello, Myka," she smiles weakly to the empty room. "How are you doing tonight?"

"I, I'm fine. Claudia and I are in St. Louis right now."

"Oh, of course. You're on a mission. I should let you work."

"No, no we're not doing anything. Just checking into our hotel room."

"Oh, alright."

"What's going on?" Myka prompts.

Helena hesitates for a moment. "Have you ever seen the show Fringe? It's on TV."

"Fringe." She thinks she hears someone talking nearby. That must be Claudia. "No, I can't say I've seen that show." A pause. "But Claudia has and she says it's good and apparently gross."

"I suppose they were rather graphic at times," Helena says. "But it was all costumes."

"I know." Myka might have chuckled at her, but it was difficult to tell for sure over the phone.

"You've really never seen Fringe?"

"No. What's it about?"

Helena tries to explain, but she's afraid it comes across as overly complicated or -worse - incredibly boring. It's like explaining how a tesla works to someone who barely grasps the concept of electricity.

"So, you really marathoned an entire TV show?"

There's definitely amusement in her voice now. Helena sighs because that's hardly the point.

"Yes, and I just finished the final episode tonight. It was... upsetting."

"Did they leave it on a cliffhanger?"

"A cliffhanger?" Helena frowns. "No, it was the final episode. There was no reason for a cliffhanger."

"I didn't know. Sometimes shows are canceled before the writers can plan a final episode."

The frown deepens. "That happens? They can just pull a show before it's finished? Why would they do something like that? That's like a magazine pulling a serial before all the installments are written."

"I'm not the right person to talk to about Hollywood business practices."

"But that's ludicrous!" Helena glances at the TV in horror. What if the show had ended before they could save Etta? What if it had ended before Etta was ever introduced? "Do they not realize people watch these shows?"

"I think they pull them because people aren't watching them."

"Then why on earth did they agree to publish - to air them at all? If no one means to watch them, then don't make them. It's a fairly straightforward concept."

Myka chuckles. "So besides becoming a fan of a television show, what else is going on?"

"What else?"

"Yeah, in life, in general."

"Well, in general, I'm horrified by the business of producing television shows that can leave audiences with unplanned cliffhangers without consequences."

"Okay."

Helena stares at the fraying seam of her couch cushion. "Besides that, I'm not sure what information you're looking for."

"I'm not looking. I just didn't know if you had reason for calling, but I'm fine with chatting. I have no - no problems with chatting."

A reason? "I suppose I called because I found that last Fringe episode upsetting." She shakes her head. "I suppose that's a silly reason for such a late phone call."

"No, no it's not -" Myka cuts herself off and then her tone switches to something more serious. "You really called because of a television show?"

"Not quite a proper reason for intruding on someone's evening, I know."

Myka doesn't respond immediately, and her pause is one second long enough for Helena to grow nervous.

"What happened in the finale?" Myka asks, still with the serious tone. "Why did it upset you?"

Helena uselessly shakes her head again, and then takes a deep breath. "Walter.. he took the boy to the future to be studied. It would prevent the observers from ever being created which would protect his family. It meant Olivia and Peter and their daughter would all be safe."

"Who's Walter?"

"The scientist, Peter's father. One of the people who started all this trouble, I suppose." Her throat feels odd, not quite tight, but threatening to tighten. How ridiculous would it be to cry while on the phone with Myka trying to explain Fringe?

"Did it work? Walter taking the boy to the future?"

Helena remembers little Etta being scooped up in her father's arms. "Yes."

"Is that why you're upset?"

"No. I would've been more upset if that hadn't worked. I would've been enraged." The plan failing, Etta not being safe in the end - Helena's heart pounds at just the idea of it.

"Then, which part of it upset you?"

Walter walking through the portal, but she doesn't know why or how. "I think I misunderstood the scene. I think I overlooked a piece of information that would explain it all."

"You're upset because you don't understand it?"

"I suppose I am." Helena gives a weak chuckle. "Of course, it may also be the late hour. I should really let you sleep if you're to track down an artifact tomorrow."

There's a moment of silence. "Helena, are you okay?"

"Yes, I'm quite fine. Thank you. I'll speak with you again soon?"

"Yeah, okay. Good night."

A slight smile pulls at Helena. "Good night." She hangs up the phone and sits a while longer on the couch in front of the darkened TV.

****

Days pass. Helena's evenings are now freed and after a few indecisive browsings through her journals, she finally digs into her research again. She finds textbooks - medical, engineering, biological - and buys them. Begins studying up on the neural system and brain development to satisfy this curiosity Fringe has inspired.

(Despite the overlap, she avoids the psychology texts. There's a dark dread in her gut whenever she spots one, and anyways, she's looking for exact facts, not interpreted meanings and loosely tested theories.)

By the third week, she's become engrossed and has managed to shelve the lingering feelings towards the TV show. She's all about the science again, the possibilities. There's nothing else in her life to distract her.

Until her cell phone rings with Myka's number lighting up the screen.

"Hello?"

"Explain it to me again."

That's hardly a greeting. "Explain what?"

"I watched the entire series of Fringe," Myka says. "So explain the finale to me again, why you were upset."

"Myka, honestly, I'm alright."

"Maybe, but you weren't that night. I want to help. It was Walter walking into the portal, right? His sacrifice?"

Sacrifice. "Yes." The blue and white image of that moment flashes bright and clear through her mind.

"But you weren't sad. You weren't angry about the plan."

"No, it needed to be done."

"Then what was it?" There's an edge to Myka's voice Helena doesn't understand, and that makes the lack of clarity for her own feelings even more frustrating.

"I don't know." She closes her text and pushes it away. "I don't know why I was upset that night. I saw that moment, and I felt... wistful. I wanted... it had to happen. He had to walk through the portal to the future. I wanted it to happen."

"Why?"

"Excuse me?"

"Why did it have to happen like that? It could have been anybody. September could've lived and gone through the portal. It was his kid they were taking."

"No." Helena sits up straighter in her chair. "No, it had to be Walter. He had to be the one to do it, because he started it all."

"The observers weren't his fault."

"Yes, they were."

"No, they weren't. Helena, the observers were not his fault. He didn't create them."

Technicalities. "But Peter and Etta and Olivia, they were his fault. Everything that happened to him was his fault. He had to fix it."

"By doing what, leaving?"

"He saved Etta. He saved the future. He made amends for his mistakes."

"And now he's gone. He's gone and his family will never see him again, may not even really know what happened to him. Walter didn't have to be the one to walk through the portal. It was him, but it didn't have to be."

"Yes, it did!" Helena takes a sharp breath and silences herself. She breathes again, calmer, fighting to push down further outbursts.

When she can speak more in a more rational tone, she adds, "He had to fix his mistakes. This was the only way."

A few seconds pass without a response. Then, "You're not him."

Helena can't respond. Doesn't understand this switch in topics.

Myka continues, "You're not Walter Bishop. Life isn't a television show. There is no magic way to make things right. You just have to keep living and making the right choices day after day."

Helena blinks and tries to ignore the burning and blurring at the bottom of her eyes. "I believe we were discussing a TV show."

"I'm not," Myka says bluntly. "You can't sacrifice yourself and take yourself away from everyone because you think that will fix things. Life doesn't work that way."

"I know! I know this doesn't fix anything. It isn't meant to." Helena clenches her teeth in annoyance at the tears slipping out. "I don't have a way to fix things. There's nothing I can do to make my previous actions alright."

"That's why you left. That's why you're still in Wisconsin."

Helena stays silent. It would be nice to hang up now. She doesn't want to discuss any of this.

But Myka's not finished talking. "Walter Bishop lost his life by walking through that portal. He lost everyone he loved. Did you ever think about that?" It's a rhetorical question because she continues on. "What's the point of redeeming yourself in one grand gesture if it means losing your life? If it means no one who cares about you can ever see you again. What's the point? What did you really fix?"

Still Helena doesn't speak.

"If you want to make things right, you have to be here. You have to stick around and make every moment count. You can't just throw it all away." Myka sighs, and Helena thinks they've reached the end of the conversation.

"Just," Myka pauses. "Please think about it, okay? Please?"

"Alright." Helena's mouth feels dry.

"Okay. Then, I'll let you get back to whatever it is you’re doing. But one more reminder:" - Helena braces herself - "You are not in any way Walter Bishop and your life is not a TV show. Got it?"

Some of her wit recovers. "My life could be a TV show."

Silence, but that just means Myka's not cutting her off. "Brilliant inventor and author, traveling through the years to land in a new century - that sounds like a fabulous premise."

She hears a huff on the other end of the line and imagines Myka is pressing her lips together to suppress a smile. "I also have historical significance."

Myka snorts, and Helena grins.

"Jesus, Helena."

"Well, it's true."

"Yes, your life would make a very interesting show, but no one would believe it was factual."

Helena grins again. "It's alright. I was regarded as unbelievable in my own days as well."

Another muffled laugh escapes through the phone. "Okay, but you got my point?"

She sobers because she knows Myka's not referring to this last exchange. "Yes, it's understood."

"And you'll think about it?"

Helena bites her lip, and then nods. "Yes."

"Good. Good. I guess I'll talk to you later then."

"Alright. Good-bye, Myka."

"Bye."

The connection ends. Helena places the phone back on her desk and stares.

That was not at all how she expected this to go.


End file.
